


Broken

by Lady Divine (fhartz91)



Series: Outside Edge [43]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Ice Skating, M/M, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 08:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14829185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhartz91/pseuds/Lady%20Divine
Summary: Kurt gets melancholy trading out his old skates for his new ones, leading to a conversation with his boyfriend about life, the future ... and his mom.





	Broken

“Hey, babe! What’cha doin’ with those relics?”

Kurt doesn’t look at his boyfriend as he approaches, absorbed in the act of moving his old Arias out of his Zuca, trading them for one of the brand new pairs Riedell sent. Kurt still has to get them heat molded and sharpened, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Out with the old and in with the new.

But in the midst of the transfer, he stopped to examine his old skates – the nicks in the leather, the scuff marks, the scratches on the blades, dulling their once mirror shine. Those marks are like the rings of a tree. Or scars. They tell the story of Kurt’s road from obscurity to championship.

Now, he’s retiring them.

Considering everything his skates have been through, everything they’ve done for him, it doesn’t seem right to toss them in the trash, or store them in a box in his parent’s musty old garage.

“Nothing. I was just looking at them.” Kurt turns the skates over in his hands. They’re not soft, but they’re definitely not as rigid as they were when he first bought them. They make a crackling noise when he squeezes them, a visible crease forming where the ankle meets the foot of the boot.

“You did it.” Sebastian takes Kurt’s other boot and gives it a test squeeze. It’s not as pliable as Kurt’s right boot, seeing as that’s his landing foot, but it’s still thrashed. “You broke them.”

“I did,” Kurt says with a sad sort of triumph. “You know, as skaters, we go through a lot of skates. But this is the first time I’ve ever broken a pair.”

“Really?” Sebastian puts the broken skate on the floor and takes a seat by his boyfriend’s side.

“Yeah. I’ve grown out of a lot of skates, but they were still usable. I could pass them on to someone else who needed them. But these … they’re completely done. I could take off the blades and donate them, but otherwise, no one else will ever be able to skate in these.”

“You sound kind of bummed about that.”

“I don’t know. Melancholy, maybe?”

“Why?” Sebastian puts a hand on Kurt’s knee and gives it a squeeze. “It’s an awesome achievement.”

Kurt chews his lower lip as he looks at his old skates, trying to come to grips with his feelings. He has so many of them, he doesn’t know which to focus on first. It doesn’t matter though. Giving over to any of them is going to turn him into a blubbering mess.

“When I was younger,” he starts after a few false starts, “my mom was _really_ struggling with chemo, and I knew – I just _knew_ \- she was going to die …”

“But she didn’t,” Sebastian reminds him before the waterworks start.

“No,” Kurt acknowledges. “She didn’t. But eight-year-old me was scared out of my mind. I don’t think I slept for close to a whole year.”

Sebastian nods because there’s nothing he can say to that. He’s never been that afraid. No one in his life has ever been sick the way Kurt’s mom has. He can’t imagine what that kind of fear would feel like.

“I remember asking her what she would regret most when she passed away. I know,” he says when he sees Sebastian’s eyes pop with shock. “A little morbid for a kid.”

“No.” Sebastian takes his boyfriend’s hand. “It’s not morbid at all. It’s natural for kids to be curious about death. Death is a terrifying thing.”

“We lived with it hanging over our heads every day, but we didn’t talk about it all that often. At least, my parents didn’t talk about it in front of me. Anyway, my mom said that she would regret the things she left unfinished, which, at the time, were not seeing me grow up, graduate college, win a gold medal. She’d regret leaving my dad in the middle of their marriage, and making him raise a son alone. She’d … she’d regret never getting to go on a second honeymoon in Hawaii, or writing the memoir she’d always wanted to write …”

“Unfinished business,” Sebastian picks up when Kurt’s voice shakes. “I’d say that’s a common regret.”

“Over time, I made _her_ unfinished business _my_ unfinished business. All of those things she wanted to see me do, I _had_ to make them happen, and as fast as I could, because …” Kurt sniffles “… because she had a timer hanging over her head clicking down, and I couldn’t stop it. So … so I had to make the team. And I had to win the medal. Because, if she didn’t get to see it, none of it would matter. She’d leave this planet with regrets, never knowing ...”

“Oh, Kurt.” Sebastian wraps his arms around him and holds him, tries hard to make everything alright for him within the confines of this one hug. He can’t, of course. For Kurt, there will always be _this_ – the fear that this horrible disease will rise back up from the ashes and take his mom away from him too soon.

And he’ll have failed.

“A lot of those things,” Kurt says through tears, “I want to accomplish for _me_. But where I’m concerned, I don’t have a deadline. Not like hers. I know that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, but my odds are a bit better than hers that I’ll get one. Ironically, as hard as I work, it never occurred to me that I could _finish_ any of it today. Or tomorrow. Or this week, or this month. The goal posts sit out there in the distance, and I can see them. I know that I’ll reach them eventually. But this …” he motions the broken skate in his hand “… proves I’m wrong. _This_ I finished. These skates are done. All that work, and winning that medal – this is the period at the end of that sentence. It _is_ possible.”

“And that’s _wonderful_!”

“But, for some reason, I feel like I don’t go forward from here. I feel like I go back to the beginning. And it’s a little daunting.”

“Well, you’re right,” Sebastian says, earning him a confused side-eye from his boyfriend. “You _do_ go back to the beginning … where your skates are concerned, anyway.” He unwinds one arm from Kurt’s torso while he talks, reaching past him to an unopened box waiting patiently beside his Zuca to have its contents unpacked. Sebastian flips the lid open, moves the paper aside, opens a white satin bag, and pulls out one of Kurt’s brand new skates. He holds it up for Kurt to see it – bright, spotless white leather, mounted on custom gold blades bearing Kurt’s full name in elegant script along the outside. “But, from there, you go forward, the way you always have. And sure, it’s hard at the beginning, and you struggle. But you work at it, day and night. And before you know it, you’re going faster and jumping higher than ever before. And the best part about it is you don’t have to go it alone. Because so many people believe in you. Me and your dad … and _Blaine_ …” Sebastian grinds his teeth around Blaine’s name, and Kurt laughs, exactly the way Sebastian had hoped. “And your mom” - He pauses to kiss Kurt on the top of the head when he feels tears come to his own eyes - “who’s fought tooth and nail to be there for you for as long as she can; to watch you climb to the top of the podium. To watch you _finish_.” Kurt’s breath hitches, his body leaning into Sebastian’s as he hugs him tight. “And the people at Riedell,” he adds, tempering the heavy with lighthearted teasing, “who sent you twenty-seven hundred dollars’ worth of brand new skates with these obnoxious gold blades on them.”

“You forget, I’m due a custom pair.” Kurt reaches into the net bag on the side of his Zuca and grabs a small packet of tissues. “I intend on choosing gold faux alligator skin, with my initials on the ankles in Swarovski crystals, and black Matrix Elite blades.”

“A-ha. And I’m going to walk five feet behind you everywhere you go when you wear them.”

“You do anyway!” Kurt laughs. “To scope out my ass!”

“Then those tacky-ass skates aren’t going to change anything, will they?”

Kurt pats his eyes and nose with a tissue as he watches Sebastian put the new skate back inside its satin bag, then slide that into his Zuca.

“Did you ever think, when you decided to be my coach, that you were going to be good at these pep talks?” Kurt asks. “Do you wing it, or …?”

“Meh.” Sebastian shrugs, reaching for the second bag. “It’s actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it. You just have to put yourself in the mindset of an 80s sit-com dad. After that, it becomes a breeze.”

Kurt places his old skate beside the one Sebastian put on the floor. They look so shoddy compared to his new skates – so battered and old. “I feel like I should bury them or something. Build a small coffin, decorate it with rhinestones ...” Sebastian shoots him a glare that makes him snort. “We should hold a candlelight vigil at the very least.”

“Hmm. We’ll need mourners,” Sebastian says because why not? If it makes Kurt feel better, let him hold a funeral for his skates. Actually, Sebastian knows a spot outside his rink where they could bury them – underneath the rose bush beside the front door. They could put a plaque above the spot: _Here lies the figure skates of skating champion Kurt Hummel – broken but not forgotten_. Sebastian’s sentimental side (mostly crammed into three inches of his left shoulder blade) kind of likes the idea of them being memorialized there, seeing as skating is what brought the two of them together.

Kurt _was_ wearing those skates on the day Sebastian fell in love with him.

“We should invite Blaine. He’d cry.”

“Yes, he would, but only because the situation requires it.”

“But do you know the best way to honor your skates?”

Kurt shakes his head. “How?”

Sebastian lifts Kurt’s other Aria into view. “By breaking in a new pair.” He slides the second skate in along the first, tucks them in, and then zippers the bag shut. When he looks back at Kurt and sees his arched eyebrow, he says, “What?”

“I thought for sure you were going to say _by making out_. That does seem to be your solution to everything.”

“We can do that, too,” Sebastian says, carefully pushing Kurt’s Zuca aside to pull his boyfriend down on top of him. “I mean, we should give it a try. It couldn’t hurt.”


End file.
